


Bake A Little Bigger,  Darling

by Onehelluvapilot



Category: Inception (2010), great british bake off
Genre: Baking, Crack, Crack Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 15:40:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15866631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onehelluvapilot/pseuds/Onehelluvapilot
Summary: The Inception crew in the Great British Bake Off.





	Bake A Little Bigger,  Darling

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Mustn't be Afraid to Bake a Little Bigger, Darling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5034499) by [chasingriver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingriver/pseuds/chasingriver), [youcantsaymylastname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcantsaymylastname/pseuds/youcantsaymylastname). 



> Go check out the original mixed media piece by chasingriver and youcantsaymylastname.  
> I stole even the title from it, because it is such a good title.

“That bastard,” Eames muttered. He and Ariadne were standing by the freezer, waiting for their jams to cool, and watching Arthur across the tent. He calmly checked his watch, and dipped out of sight behind Cobb's table as he bent to get something out of the oven. He came back into view a second later, holding a tray of biscuits that they could see were perfectly browned. “How does he have the timing so perfect?” The point man was always perfectly calm, never seeming rushed in the least or coming across any unexpected challenges like the other bakers.

“He's been using the dream to practice, that's the only explanation,” Ariadne concurred. She'd been tempted to do the same thing herself, what with her classes taking up most of her time, but Yusuf wouldn't sell her any somnacin. After all, it wouldn't be in his own interests to help out the competition.

“No, darling,” Eames sighed. “He's just a perfectionist, the bastard.” The forger himself tended to wing things, and relied more often than not in his decorating skills to cover up the mistakes. His flavors tended to be better than Arthur's though, which was some consolation. “Think our jam has cooled enough?” he asked the young woman. He was more experienced with dreams than he was, but she had more skill with baking.

“Probably,” Ariadne agreed, stepping back from where she was leaning on the fridge to open it instead. She pulled out her marmalade, blackberry jam, and cherry jelly. Saito gave her a look like she was crazy for making so many different things as she walked past him, but she's wanted three different colors to paint her little row houses with, and didn't like the combination of frosting or sugar glaze with gingerbread, so jellies it was. Mel and Sue snuck over and sampled all of them behind her back while she was checking if the houses were cool enough to paint, and feigned innocence (badly) when she caught them at it. They moved on to bothering/encouraging Cobb after a minute.

“You look a bit lost, deary,” Mel pointed out. The extractor gestured hopelessly at his crumbled shortbread.

“It's somehow both dry and soggy,” he despaired. With only ten minutes left on the clock, it was looking more and more like he'd be presenting a basketful of crumbs rather than a showstopper. Though he'd done so well in the Technical challenge that Saito accused him of extracting the recipe from Paul beforehand, it was looking like he was going home.

“Maybe you could make it into a conceptual piece,” Sue suggested. “Rubble: A commentary on the futility of edible architecture.”

“Doesn't look like I have much of an other option,” he noted. With a sigh he smacked the already falling apart side of the building with a spoon, causing it to crumble more as bringing back memories of Limbo.

Saito, looking over from behind his simple cottage, the likes of which he had never actually been inside in real life, couldn't help but be a little relieved at Cobb's apparent failure. They had been neck and neck at the bottom of the pack before this, and his lack of architectural expertise and creativity was showing through badly in this bake. As an old friend, he felt bad, but as a businessman, he recognized that sometimes one had to take advantage of their friends’ disadvantages to advance themself. If Cobb went home, he'd move ahead.

Yusuf was stirring up some last minute spun sugar to add as clouds to the top of his cookie skyscraper, balancing the chemical reaction to try to predict how much product he would get. It wouldn't be enough, he decided, to really look like anything, but not knowing what else to do exactly he kept stirring.

One minute left.

Eames was patching up a hole in the wall of his bake with frosting. The pale shortbread building resembled his apartment in Mombasa, but wasn't an exact copy of it because he knew how Arthur would scold about losing track of reality. Even though this wasn't a dream. He'd checked, four times after getting the letter from the Great British Bake Off saying he'd been accepted and then verifying it again with his totem every time he walked into the tent.

Arthur stepped away from his never ending staircase constructed in peanut butter cookies a whole ten seconds before time was up. It wasn't highly decorated, as he was relying on the impossible construction to impress the judges. Though he wasn't sure Paul and Mary would understand how hard it was to render a dream paradox in real world three dimensional space. Maybe he should have added some decoration after all. Voicing this concern to Eames while the judges were deliberating earned him only the remark “Mustn’t be afraid to bake a little bigger, darling.”


End file.
